I’m not here to tell anyone how to earn a crust. If you’re not hurting anyone and it’s keeping the lights on, you do you baby. Get that bread. And that goes double if it’s something you do while you’re on your way to bigger and better things. Take, for example, Idris Elba, who quite famously worked a string of menial jobs before breaking big in show biz. But according to Dave Chappelle, Elba had one other somewhat less-reported side hustle: Selling him weed.
The revelation came straight out of Chappelle’s mouth on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, and pertains to Elba’s time working as a security guard at a famous New York City comedy club.
With the subject of conversation circling the idea that you should treat everyone – people in customer service particularly – with kindness, Chappelle very matter-of-factly stated “Idris Elba, the famous actor, used to be a security guard at [comedy club] Caroline’s… I used to buy weed from him.”
While that sounds reasonably out-there, turns out Elba himself has openly admitted as much in the past.
In his 2019 appearance on Saturday Night Live, Elba referred to his days working as a bouncer and doorman at Caroline’s, and freely admitted to slinging a little weed on the side.
During his monologue, Idris Elba joked “About 20 years ago, I was working down the street from this building on Broadway. Not as an actor. As a doorman. No, seriously. I was the bouncer at Carolines comedy club on 49th and Broadway… Now, this was my night job when I started in this country. This time of year, I would be standing outside freezing my bollocks off. I mean, it was a decent job, though. I made some great contacts. By which I mean, I sold weed.”
So there you go. We’ve all gotta start somewhere, and “selling weed to famous people” is definitely starting somewhere.
The things you bloody learn.
